Heber Langston was born in Croydon, Surrey, on 1 July 1907, the eldest son of Earle Legh Langston, a Clerk in Holy Orders, and Alice, née Carr. He was educated at Monkton Combe School, Bath, and St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he qualified in 1931 with distinction in surgery. After junior appointments at St Bartholomew's he became resident surgical officer at the Lord Mayor Treloar Hospital, Alton, and during the war he worked as a single-handed orthopaedic surgeon at the Park Prewitt EMS Hospital in Basingstoke. In 1948 he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the Southampton Hospital Group, the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester, and the Lord Mayor Treloar Hospital. His main orthopaedic interests lay in the surgical management of bone and joint tuberculosis, bone dystrophies, deformities from poliomyelitis and the internal fixation of fractures. He also contributed to the orthopaedic section of the *Official medical history of the 1939-45 war*, orthopaedic chapters in *Modern surgery for nurses* and other publications. In addition to his clinical work he was an outstanding administrator deeply involved in the activities of the British Medical Association. He was a member of the BMA Council from 1954 to 1972, chairman of the Central Committee for Hospital Medical Services from 1959 to 1969, and was finally elected Vice-President of the BMA in 1969. He was a member of the Wessex Regional Hospital Board and numerous DHSS committees and working parties. In 1958 he was invited to serve on the High Commission assessing medical services in Ceylon, but the Langston report which followed and which was accepted was suppressed after the setting up of the Sri Lankan republic. On retirement in 1972 he was appointed visiting professor of orthopaedics at Baghdad Medical College for three years. His interests included travel, history, skiing and golf. He retired to Lymington in Hampshire and died on 5 July 1992, aged 86. He was survived by his wife Madge, née Thirkell, a JP, whom he married in 1945, and by his son Legh, daughter Julia, a nurse, and five grandchildren.